3 things we clearly learnt about Derby County after 2-2 draw v Luton | OneFootball

Derby County’s unbeaten run stretched to four matches last night with a draw against Luton Town – but Wayne Rooney will be kicking himself that the Rams didn’t collect all three points.

Despite County languishing at the bottom of the table thanks to a 12-point deduction, they are not currently playing like a team who are fighting for their lives and they look to have some sort of freedom about them.

The Rams took the lead twice at Pride Park against the Hatters but they were pegged back the same amount of times, with Elijah Adebayo’s 83rd minute header sending Luton back down the M1 with a point.

Let’s look at THREE things we learnt from Derby’s performance against Nathan Jones’ side.

They still have a goalscoring touch

With Derby restricted in what they could do this summer in terms of transfers, just Sam Baldock arrived at Pride Park in terms of forwards and that was hardly ever going to be enough – especially when Colin Kazim-Richards went down with an injury in August.

Derby’s lack of threat in-front of goal was never more apparent than Saturday against Preston North End, where they had plenty of chances to win but couldn’t take any of them and it ended up being a goalless draw.

They were looking pretty toothless in-front of goal from open play until last night, where both Tom Lawrence and Jason Knight found the back of the net.

Neither are strikers but it will still have been good for Derby fans to see that there’s a clinical touch in the team still.

Jagielka and Davies aren’t invincible

One of the surprises of Derby’s season is how comfortable the pairing of Curtis Davies and Phil Jagielka have been.

At a combined age of 75 it is the oldest partnership in the league and probably the EFL, but for two players who didn’t play much last season they’ve hardly missed a beat.

Davies suffered a brutal achilles injury in December 2020 but has been able to play every minute of every Championship match this season, and when playing with Jagielka the team have only conceded seven goals in nine games.

Last night accounted for two of them and it just proved that whilst they have looked comfortable most weeks, there will be times that they are bettered with the towering presence of Adebayo getting the better of them on this occasion – but they will have better days than they have poor ones.

Derby’s star man on Saturday against PNE was Irish teenager Festy Ebosele, who stepped in at right-back for the suspended Nathan Byrne.

His mazy runs from defence caused the Lilywhites all sorts of problems but despite his performance, the 19-year-old came out of the team for the returning Byrne.

That was a frustrating one for Derby fans to take as they want to see as many academy graduates prosper as possible, and it could be argued that he didn’t deserve to get dropped back to the bench.

Could he return for the trip to Coventry on Saturday? Who knows, but he looks an exciting talent for sure.